The Mutineer's Daughter

by Chris Kennedy

  Amelia sneered. “Yeah, but we’re not betting on her! We’re betting on her absentee old man and an Alliance that left us swinging in the wind for over a month! We’re out of time for maybes and hope-fors! Jason, blow it!”

  Mio and Harry both started forward. Eyes wide, Trevor Werner flipped up the safety cover on the detonator’s trigger.

  * * *

  The Puller began to close on Adelaide, arrowing straight for the terminator between night and dawn, where Mio’s transmission had come from.

  Not everyone was on board with this plan, however.

  Amanda Ashton stared wide-eyed at Benno. “Benno, I know this is hard to take, but this may not be the best call.”

  “It’s my daughter.”

  “Yes. Yes, I know that. But she’s not the only daughter on that planet. There are a lot more souls than hers at stake. If she says the Terrans are going to retake control of that battery, and our only chance is for them to blow themselves up, we may have to accept that. We’re crippled. We’re very nearly disarmed. We might not be able to stop them in time, even if we were in fighting shape. And if they wrest control back, going in closer just guarantees we’ll die.”

  Benno ignored her. “Time to fire Mount DR2?”

  The petty officer at the weapons monitoring station tied into CIC answered. “Approximately three minutes, sir!”

  “The mount is in local, but they should have a tactical feed. Pass to DR2’s mount captain, ‘Batteries release as soon as targets can be discriminated at the position surrounding the missile control station. Danger close, friendlies in possession of the central vehicle. Use kinetic rounds only, no area effect rounds.’”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  Ashton kept trying. “Our best bet for survival is to pull back until that control van is destroyed. Then we can attack it from beyond range, or from the other side of the planet, or in any number of other ways. It’s how we save the whole colony, Benno, and not just one person—if we’re lucky. Doing this, though, assumes they can hold out, assumes the Terrans don’t have a backup control station, and assumes we can survive close in. I hate to be the one to say this. It reminds me too much of something Captain Palmer would have said, but this mission is not this one battle. It’s not all about you, Benno.” She looked at him, but he refused to look back at her. “Or is it?”

  He turned to the XO, rage heating his cheeks. “You’re not part of this mutiny, Commander! You remain alive and outside the brig on my authority! I suggest you remember that!”

  “And I suggest you remember you’re not the only one listening on this circuit.”

  Benno paused. Forcing his voice to remain calm, he nodded and keyed his mic for the internal net. “CIC, Chief Rajput, and Engineering Control, Senior Chief Ludovic, this is the bridge. I assume you’ve heard the XO’s argument?”

  There was a long pause before Rajput’s voice came back. “That’s affirmative, Bridge.”

  Ludovic’s much gruffer voice was unmistakable. “No one wants your kid to die, Benno. But we lack sufficient options to burn in hot and low if it means we’re all done for.”

  Benno shook his head. He took a breath and spoke to them. “Either of your stations can cut out the bridge at any time. The fact that you haven’t done it, and the fact the XO hasn’t tried to countermand my orders directly… it means that deep down, you don’t want to. Logic is not on my side here, folks. We should turn tail, get outside range, and fix ourselves before we try this. But I don’t have time for logic. I can’t just sit up here and let her sacrifice herself. She’s my little girl. She shouldn’t have to fight our fight. I’m supposed to. We’re supposed to, even if it means we die…even if it means we fail. There are no guarantees. Down there, they can blow themselves up at any point, render this final run moot. Until that happens, though, I mean to gamble everything I can. I know any of you would too.”

  No one said anything.

  Finally, the XO gestured to the tactical screen. “Passing inner exosphere. Going to start getting drag from the atmosphere, especially in our current state. May need to reverse thrust if we want to sit over the target site.”

  “Combat concurs.”

  “Yeah, Bridge. Engineering concurs. Let’s slow our roll and get ready to pound those bastards into oblivion.”

  Benno smiled, nodded, and narrowed his eyes at the screen and the icons beginning to discriminate into separate forces on it. “Bridge, aye. Stand by to fire.”

  * * *

  Jason’s finger hovered over the detonator trigger. Sweat beaded on his brow. They could all tell he was struggling with the decision to commit suicide for the greater good.

  Everyone else stayed frozen in place. The van rocked and sounded as the Terrans tried to break in.

  Amelia yelled. “Trevor! Now!”

  At that, Jason closed his eyes. As he did, Harry surged forward and planted one meaty, iron-hard fist in his face. The slimmer man’s head snapped backward. His hand spasmed open, dropping the detonator, trigger guard still flipped open.

  Harry dove, fumbled with the falling detonator, and managed to keep it from hitting the ground or from accidentally triggering it himself.

  Jason’s back bounced off the control van’s wall, and he blinked rapidly. He shook his head back and forth, trying to clear it. “Owww, Harry…”

  “Damn it,” Amelia cursed and glared at Mio. “This planet dies, and I’m blaming you, little brat.”

  Mio, her eyes wide as saucers, could only nod. “Okay.”

  Harry carefully closed the trigger guard and put the detonator on the far side of the van, away from Jason and Amelia. He glanced at the control station he had been seated at before. The icons and lines were only gobbledygook to Mio, but Harry nodded and said, “That ship is burning in from extremely high orbit pretty hard, but not as fast as we might hope. She might have been damaged in the fight with the Turd ship.”

  Mio moved closer and stood in front of the door. “So, what should we do until they get here?”

  In answer, the door wrenched open as the latch gave way. It stopped on the security catch, two inches open to the early morning light outside and the angry face of a Terran Marine just beyond it. Mio yelped, raised her laser pistol and shot a bolt of energy by reflex. It missed the Marine, reflected at an angle off the inner surface of the door, and sprayed hot slag and metal vapor all over the Terran’s face. He screamed and fell away.

  Harry maneuvered in front of her and stuck his laser rifle through the gap. “We fight!” he roared.

  Amelia and Jason, earlier arguments forgotten, closed in on either side of Harry and aimed their weapons through the gap as well. Shot after shot blazed through the partially open doorway, setting up a wedge of death for any Terran foolish enough to try to cross or take advantage of the opening.

  Still, they could not shoot anywhere else. The door shielded the Terrans just as it shielded them. The force outside continued trying to break in through the sides and the door.

  There was no room for Mio, who had been shouldered out of the way. Instead, she looked back at the control station. It made no more sense now than it had before. The highlighted icon closed in as slowly as molasses but, given that the screen represented orbital distances, it must have been moving very, very fast.

  Mio wondered if she should call her dad again, let him know they were going to try and hold out, but she did not want to distract him or cause him more worry. She had grown so much during this. She wanted her father to be proud of her, not to disregard her like everyone except Harry seemed to do.

  Someone outside finally realized trying the door was a losing proposition. A muted whine rose in the background, far different from the pounding of fists or the snap of laser rifles. Harry’s eyes went wide as he recognized the sound. He screamed to Mio, “Down!”

  Where before, Old Mio might have thought about it, questioned it, or failed to react, New Mio dropped instantly. Harry and Amelia fell almost as fast.

  The whine became a roar,
a series of explosions fired so tightly together, in a string so long, they failed to register as individual shots. Lasers were a boon to infantry: light, powerful, very nearly ammo-independent. But they sometimes lacked the punch of physical rounds. For anti-materiel fire, a bullet was hard to beat. And a magnetic accelerator Gatling cannon, a MAGiC, firing tungsten shot, was most terrible of all.

  The continuous stream of penetrators ripped through the armored walls of the control van like they were made of tissue paper, fired so fast they left behind a trail of ionized air torn into plasma. It looked like straight white lightning bolts cutting through both sides of the van. The line of fire swept through the control van in just over a second, passing chest-high through the space Mio, Harry, and Amelia had just occupied.

  Trevor Werner, so intent on keeping the Marines at bay from the little gap, did not drop with them. MAGiC fire lanced through his chest. He separated, shoulders up and chest down, as violently as if someone had lassoed him with detonation cord. Blood sprayed all over the interior of the control van. Jason did not yell or cry out. He made a wet splashing noise as his legs and torso collapsed and then a second as his head and shoulders slapped wetly against the opposite wall and slid down to the floor.

  It was the worst thing Mio had ever seen. And if she did not stand and act, it would not be the last.

  She leaped to her feet as the roar vanished, and the whine wound down. A line of glowing orange holes, each one an inch and a half wide, perforated the control van all around them. There was less metal between the neatly spaced holes than there was open space. She could see straight out all around her. The Turd Marines had thrown themselves to the ground as the MAGiC mount took over. Now that it had stopped, they were prone and less quick to rise than she was.

  The mount was too far off, and armored, but that did not hold true for the Marines who had clustered behind the opposite side of the door. Harry had called this sort of thing a target rich environment. Mio raised her pistol, aimed, and fired…then moved her aim a fraction of a degree, and shot again. And again. And again.

  Harry and Amelia rose and joined her. The Marines dodged, rolled and fired back, but it was easier to fire out of a narrow gap than it was to fire into one. Medieval arrow slits had worked for a reason. The MAGiC mount may have pierced the van like a tin can, but it had given them a momentary advantage as well.

  They could not let the Marines approach, could not allow them to wrench open the laughably weakened door and retake the control van, even if the cable runs to the antennas were severed. Anything broken could be fixed with a splice in minutes. The Puller would not survive that. First Landing would not survive that.

  Mio could not allow it, even if it meant she would not survive it.

  The Marines quickly figured out the length of time and the butcher’s bill necessary to retake the van partly intact were too great. Instead of continuing their headlong assault, they went into full retreat and pulled back behind cover.

  The MAGiC mount whined again as its smoothly-greased cylinder of coilgun barrels began to spin. The mount re-oriented, aiming lower for another sweep across the van’s side. There would be no ducking beneath this barrage.

  Mio stopped firing. Desperate and bereft, she wished for her Mom. She cried for her Dad. With one hand, she reached out and took hold of Harry’s hand as she picked up the detonator and flipped up the cover with her other. The old fighter looked at her and nodded once, knowing it had to be done.

  Against MAGiC, only the finger of God was paramount. The mount’s whine failed to ratchet up into a roar. Instead, a shaft of light reached down and obliterated the mount, leaving a huge crater and a crack of sound louder and sharper than lightning. The deck of the van pulsed beneath Mio’s feet. Three seconds later, another shaft of light, another crack, and a knot of Terran Marines exploded. Three seconds and an armored truck vanished into a fireball.

  Railgun unitary penetrators fired down from the heavens, bracketing either side of the control van, boom, boom, boom, over and over again, leaving behind craters and destruction. The shots surrounded them, encircled them, and moved out from them. Wherever a cluster of Marines or a piece of military equipment stood exposed to the sky, the rapid strike of a lance of hardened metal moving at meteoric velocities ended it, converting orbital kinetic energy into heat, light, and carnage. The Puller’s orbital bombardment was not the apocalyptic devastation that had taken out the Army and Navy bases, or that had decisively dealt with most of the resistance after Dan’s betrayal, but that was only an issue of ammunition choice.

  This remained just as insurmountable and unopposable, though. Artillery was often referred to as the “king of battle.” But orbital artillery was the ultimate ruler over all the lesser lords. Mio’s final stand had permitted their approach. And in return, they had saved Mio, her friends, her fellow citizens, and had given her back her family and her planet. Mio flipped the cover back down on the detonator.

  All hail the king.

  * * *

  The single-stage-to-orbit dropship that touched down in the field across from Mio carried the markings of the Terran Union Armed Services, but those symbols offered nothing more for her to fear. Not today. Today they represented hope, because the Turds no longer flew them. Today, loyal Alliance Navy pilots and her fellow partisans manned that cockpit.

  It was utterly unsafe to approach until the ground crew chief waved her forward, but that did not stop her from running up as soon as the dropship ramp cracked open. It similarly did not prevent her father from jumping out and running for her as soon as it dropped down enough for him to do so. They came together, and Benno crushed his daughter in his encircling arms before the ramp finally settled upon the ground. Mio hugged him back just as fiercely.

  They both stood there, breathing in choking gulps, crying as ugly and unashamedly as any two people could, without saying a word. Others milled past them, either to unload personnel and gear from the Puller or to load it up for the return to space. The stricken destroyer needed materiel of every kind, and lots and lots of time, before she would ever fly out of orbit again, not to mention her need for personnel, supplies, repairs…and a good deal of discussion and frank re-evaluation regarding her status, her mission, and her future.

  But that was for another day.

  Today, there was only time for reunion and reconnection.

  Finally, the tears, the sobs, and the embrace cooled themselves. Benno held his daughter out from him and laughed, embarrassed. Mio laughed too, awkwardly, and both of them took a moment to wipe their eyes and compose themselves.

  Benno spoke first. “Oh, my mija Mio. I’ve missed you so much, Love. I’ve been so worried about you! You have no idea.”

  “I have no idea? Daddy, this has been so crazy! So much has happened, so much has gone wrong, and I’ve been so scared. I missed you soooo, so much, Dad,” she answered.

  Without a hint of shame, he searched her face and began to look her over, attempting to find any blemish, any mark, any sign of injury. Mio tolerated it for a count of ten before she finally raised her hands and pushed him away, gently but insistently.

  A new, more exasperated, more prideful look was on her face.

  Benno scowled. “What?”

  Mio set her mouth in a firm line. “I’ve been scared, Dad. I thought I’d go insane. But I’ve been brave, too.”

  “I know that, Sweetie—”

  “No, Dad. You say you know it, but I don’t know if you understand. This has been hard. I’ve seen death. I’ve experienced pain, and misery, and fear. I’ve killed people and fought for others. I’m not the same girl you left behind. I’m not just your little ‘mija Mio.’” She paused for a minute. She felt both proud and afraid. She did not want to push her father away, not when she had needed him for so long, but she also could not just tuck herself under his wing and wish away all that had happened to her. If she did, it was as if she rejected all she had fought for and had slowly become.

  Mio tried to continue
, but she didn’t know where to start. Should she tell him about the Rogers? About the horrors she had experienced or about how she had grown into something hard and sharp, like a knife? What about Dan and how she had uncovered his treason? Or about Harry and all he had taught her, things that she perhaps should never have learned or should have learned only from her father? What about Diego, or about the first Terran she had killed? Should she tell him about the strange, hidden tunnels that still had no explanation?

  Benno saw the struggle on her face, and it broke his heart. It had saved him, to know that she had survived, that she had endured, but knowing it had affected her—and knowing and not knowing exactly how it had—filled him with trepidation. “Mio. I know. You’re right. I’m sorry this whole ordeal forced these changes on you, but it doesn’t matter how they’ve changed you, not to me. I love you. I’m proud of you and your strength. Damn, girl, I’ve already heard some things transmitted up to the Puller, and believe me, you’ve done nothing you need forgiveness for, nothing you need to be ashamed of or fearful of how I might react.”

  Inside, Benno winced. The same was not true of him. The word had not spread yet, but the colonists—both plebs and aristos alike—knew something was up with their saviors. He would have to face it, here, on Adelaide. They were traitors and mutineers, but with the Puller in her current state, they could not proceed on to free Putnam, Trinity, or New Kiev…not yet. Nor could they hold off the Alliance if, or when, they finally came after them. Similarly, if the Terrans returned to augment their forces or to pull their Marines out, the Puller had no chance of defending herself or the planet.

  And even if they did get away, even if they used every resource on Adelaide or what remained up in orbit with the wreckage of the Mare Crisium to return to fighting form and rescue the other three worlds, what then? What would they do with CDR Ashton and the loyalists? Would he be forced to remain on the run forever, or would he turn himself in to face his crimes? Was there a third option that would not schism the Alliance completely?